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When “Sorry” is not the hardest word for a CEO

When Elton John wrote the song “Sorry seems to be the hardest word” probably he didn’t have in mind a CEO trying to find the right words to apologize. However, Elton John’s song describes the agony and the psychological situation that a CEO finds himself/herself during a crisis. During 2015 several CEO’s were obliged to express an apology to their customers and stakeholders as a result of failures and misconduct of their companies.

The intention of this article is not to criticize whatsoever the practice of the organizations but to demonstrate the importance and the value of a sincere apology.

You may find below some of these apologies that CEO’s expressed in 2015:

NVIDIA’s CEO apologized for the GTX 970 memory controversy however he expressed his annoyance saying that “Instead of being excited that we invented a way to increase the memory of [the card], some were disappointed that we didn’t better describe the segmented nature of the architecture for that last 1GB of memory.”

The merger between United and Continental airlines appears to be hitting the seven-year itch a few years early, as new United CEO Oscar Munoz began his tenure acknowledging the mega-merger may not have been such a good idea after all. United began its regrets tour on the day of the official fifth anniversary of the creation of United Continental Holdings – by taking out ads in eight newspapers around the country. The ads feature Munoz apologizing for failing to meet customer expectations and vowing to improve. “This integration has been rocky. Period,” he tells the WSJ. “We just have to do that public mea culpa… The experience of our customers has not been what we want it to be.”

The chief executive of Reddit has apologized to its community of users for actions that led to an embarrassing revolt which took down some of the social bookmarking site’s largest communities, particularly video gaming forums that drive a good deal of the site’s traffic. “We screwed up,” Ellen Pao said today. “Not just on July 2 but also over the past several years.”

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized to developers for past years practice. In reference to the years when Twitter first courted developers, only to then cut off certain features as it grew and tried to find its own business and platform feet, Dorsey said: “Our relationship with developers got confusing, unpredictable. We want to come to you today and apologize for the confusion.”

The CEO of Office Depot has apologized for a store’s refusal to print a pro-life flier. The office supply store received complaints of religious discrimination from customers after its rejection of the flier. “We sincerely apologize to Ms. Goldstein for her experience and our initial reaction was not at all related to her religious beliefs. We invite her to return to Office Depot if she still wishes to print the flier,” Roland Smith, chairman and chief executive of Office Depot, said in a statement.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and they do not reflect in any way those of his various affiliations.